Recently I’ve been recording a singer/songwriter as part of his latest record production. His style is folk/pop so there’s a lot of acoustic guitar: strummed, picked and finger picked. You can imagine how dynamic it is! During one session we were recording his fairly quiet finger picked part which was going to be a background to other acoustic guitar parts. While he played I asked, “Is that how loud you’re going to get?” as I set the levels going into Pro Tools. He said yes. Golden.Everything was great and then after the second chorus he decided to lay into the guitar with some percussive strums. So much for not getting any louder. Now at this point many engineers would be sweating, biting their nails and possibly thinking of ways they could cover up their tracks: “I could use my de-clipping plug-in . . . or maybe I could suggest using a tape simulator plug-in and say it’s the ‘tape saturation’ you’re hearing . . . ummm, no, maybe I should just tell him it’s the tube mic, oh wait there’s no tube in it! . . . ahhh . . . oh #%$^&!!!”

But me, I could have reclined even further in my chair, sipped on a Mai Tai and thought about how much of a breeze recording engineering really can be . . .when you set the proper recording levels . . .

I once sent an email to guitarist Brent Barcus (Shania Twain, Michael W. Smith, Steve Curtis Chapmen, etc.) early in my career. I couldn’t believe it when he actually replied. His advice to me was to never play for free and always get something for doing the gig. Great advice, but it proved to be easier said than done. In the music industry it’s common to be hired for no money. Sometimes it’s just part of trying to attract freelance work and other times it’s called an “internship”. It’s often touted as a way for you to gain experience, fatten your resumé, prove yourself before money is paid . . . if it ever is. But if you can get a job folding clothes or running a cash register at Wal-Mart for minimum wage, aren’t you worth at least minimum wage as a professional musician or producer/engineer?

As I write this blog I’m listening to the new Rush album, Clockwork Angels. I’m a huge Rush fan . . . but who isn’t? In my teens it was nothing short of idolatry and an endless quest to look and sound like Lifeson. It turned me into even more of a geek/loser in high school, but hey, I found a way to express my identity . . . through another person’s persona . . . hmmm, OK, moving on to the positive part of my addiction . . .

A knowledgable musician is a good musician, and a good musician never stops learning.

I was at a family birthday party recently and a relative asked me how the lesson scene was going. I explained that things were not as good as last year, but it’s still early September. His reason for asking was that he heard about the closing down of the biggest music store in the area, citing low numbers of student sign-ups as a big factor. I’m not sure if this is what other music schools and instructors are experiencing, but I certainly am. In the decade I’ve been teaching there has never been a shortage of students, until now. Is it the economy? High gas prices? Low wages or wage freezes? Joblessness? I don’t know. But that’s not the reason for this blog. I want to talk about students’ attitude and perception. Who knows, maybe that’s also a factor in the low turn-out, too.

If you’re like most other musicians you’ve had to do some teaching to supplement your gigging income. Maybe you hate it and view it as a necessary evil. I certainly did, until the lightbulb went off . . .

He taught in a music store in a strip mall near my place and I had just signed up for a block of lessons. His big, long, permed hair practically filled the room. Mr. Perm held an 80’s coloured Ibanez and it was obvious this teacher was into hair metal bands with flashy, fast guitar playing.

He made his introductions, played a bit and then asked me to play something . . .

So I grabbed my classy tobacco sunburst Paul Reed Smith. Mr. Perm was probably thinking I was one of those annoying spoiled kids from the ‘burbs with a nice guitar.

I proceeded to play the riff from ‘Show Don’t Tell’ by Rush, thinking, of course, I was all that and more . . . except Perm had the little solid state Peavey practice amp with the distortion set “on eleven”. You couldn’t even tell what I was playing because the sound was so distorted. Great for metal, bad for early-90’s Rush which should be clean to slightly overdriven, a touch of chorus and highly sophisticated sounding.

1) Levels: Make sure the level going to disk is conservative. This is something a lot of people struggle with because they think the levels have to be just shy of the red zone. Aim for peaks around -20 and -12 dBFS. For more info on this, grab a coffee and read this awesome article.

2) Always have the “tape rolling”: Once you’ve got everything set-up and ready to go, hit “record” even if the band / artists isn’t “ready”. The first performance could be the best and that initial noodling may be the beginnings of a great song or hook.

3) Set it and Leave it: After everything is set-up, you’ve hit record and the performance is on, don’t make any changes, especially for vocalists. Any changes you’re making that you can hear are changes they can hear and will very quickly pull them “out of the zone”.

4) Ask the Artist: Once the artist or band has laid down the first take, ask them how it sounds and if there are any changes that they would like. 5) Mute the Click: Not right away, obviously! What I mean is sometimes at the end of the song there’s what classical musicians call a “ritardando”, or ritard for short. It’ll be written on sheet music as rit. At this point mute the click and let the musician(s) create a natural slowing of the tempo without the relentless sound of the click hammering in their ears. They’ll appreciate it and you’ll shatter their preconception that engineers are Neanderthals with zero musicality.

'In every adversity there is the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.'-- Napolean Hill My wife made me read a funny article she saw in Real Simple magazine because I’ve been blogging about education and audio school. The article, ‘5 Things You Shouldn’t Say to a Recent College Graduate’ can be found here.

Have you been on the receiving end of one of those comments or ones like these?

“The economy’s pretty bad, maybe you should get a part-time job in the meantime.”

“I have a friend who works at / owns a ________ , I could get you in” (but it’s a crappy job)Or, they don’t use words, but their body language says “I disapprove”, “I have reservations”, “I’m clearly superior”, or “I told you so”.Then just slap them! OK, that probably wouldn’t help. The problem is people don’t understand the nature of work in an arts industry. The last thing you need is to feel worse about yourself after enduring one of these conversations with someone who clearly hasn’t been reading Real Simple. So let me give you three tips to help you keep your chin high and put you in the driver’s seat of the conversation.

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself”, John Dewey Welcome to the final part of the Attending Audio School series: the reward. As promised, this will be the happiest part of this blog series. I started with the bad news, so let me tell you the good news. Here are just some of the rewards of attending audio school:

Last time we looked at the risk involved in going to audio school and the reasons for attending school. I hope you’ve already started your research and networking.

Today we’ll be looking at the the possible ROI (return on investment) of an audio education for the purpose of getting work. In Part 1 I said,

“If you're going to school to train for a first or second career, you're spending thousands of dollars on your education and you want a paid job afterward.”

I want to zero in on this because this is the reason the majority of people go to school. And if we’re talking about the ROI of our education, we’re talking directly in terms of paid employment. So the question is:Are there any jobs in audio production?